Eyes of the Wolf

46

“Sir!”

I lift my head, ears up, and watch with bleary eyes as a young man runs to Sparrow and me. I yawn, and he slows appreciably, noticing me for the first time. His heartbeat quickens, audibly. He knows that I am the more dangerous predator here.

Still hesitating, he turns his head to my sleeping packmate, his features obscured by the darkness of the still-night. “Sir, you can’t have a dog off its leash.”

I stand and stretch. The human takes about five steps back. Submissive, cowardly creature. And I am not an “it.”

“Wake up, sir!” How stupid could he get? Anybody intelligent would either figure I was gonna bite him and run away, or figure I wasn’t and go up and shake Sparrow until he woke. This guy has small-dog complex; can’t actually make us do anything, but he’ll yap until someone shuts him up. I growl, attempting to meet this end, and he pales. Freezes.

Not worth my time. Satisfied that he will not challenge my dominance, I circle the bench and lie across Sparrow’s feet. He wakes.

“Sir!” The man sounds desperate, his voice tremulous. “Sir, you need to get a leash on that dog, it’s vicious!”

I let out a gust of air through my nose as Sparrow sits up. Stretches. Leans forward.

“What?” he grunts.

“Th-that dog needs a leash. She was gonna attack me.” He whimpers like a puppy. If I bark at him, he will run like a rabbit.

“She looks pretty fierce.”

“She growled at me.”

“She’s protective.”

I hear the vocals of the human’s start humming to life again, and before I can bark some silence into him, Sparrow interjects, “I’ll take care of it. Thanks for waking me up.”

:o3

“I didn’t try to attack him,” I grumbled, leaning my head against a spot just below the headrest of the car seat. I really wished I was as big as my wolf, sometimes.

“I figured.” The engine beneath us roared and settled to a leonine growl beneath us. He yawned. “What time is it?”

“Just after three.” I didn’t know why I was answering him—he could read the lighted numbers as well as me. Good thing about the unholy morning hours: no humans were out to see a horse-sized wolf shift into a midget girl and then throw her clothes on while her friend stood on the other side of the truck.

Before he shifted into park, Adam leaned back against the seat and rubbed at his face with his hands. I watched as my mind flitted around, and then laughed when I remembered the man.

“What?”

“Nothing.” When he continued to look at me, I shook my head. “I just found it funny that that guy went through all that trouble to tell you to put a leash on me. He didn’t seem bothered by that you were sleeping on a park bench like a hobo.”

“I was not sleeping like a hobo.”

I grinned and settled more comfortably in my seat as the car clicked and started rolling. “Wha’d’you think he was doing out this early?”

“I don’t know.”

Chris immediately came to mind, and I remembered how she would have come up with something outrageous off the top of her head. I bit the inside of my cheek, my smile as gone as the local stars.

“Adam?”

“Hm?”

“How do you think Chris recognized me?”

He mulled it over.

“I don’t know.”

:o3

We returned to Pack territory, arriving with the first rays of the sun at about five fifteen. We really had driven pretty far away yesterday. The moment we were out of the car, I was ravenous, and felt my skin itching. I told Adam, and we went back to his house to get food. Iago welcomed us with his raucous ramblings, which cheered me, and Adam and I sat on the floor and ate feast leftovers cold, neither of us willing to wait for them to heat again.

“I was thinking…”

My head snapped around to give him my attention, muscles straining to lift ears that wouldn’t rise. My wolf and I were getting a little too in-sync. I was surprised that he was actually volunteering conversation, since he’d been so on-guard today and yesterday.

“Yeah?” I urged gently.

“You said your friend’s boyfriend recognized you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah.” I took another bite of ham, then stopped, slanting my eyes his way again. “You’re not gonna kill him or anything, are you?”

“I don’t think so.” He sounded distant.

I gave him about thirty seconds. “Then why do you ask?”

He was quiet again. I was about to prompt him again when he looked at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “Will you take me to her house again?”

:o3

We get there just as the sun has full aerial leverage, shoving at us with its heat until we pant hard. The sad thing is that it is beginning to cool in preparation for fall. As a wolf, I understand the importance of the sun, but I do wish abstractly that it would cool a bit. I do not wish for my fur to be gone. The day I desire my fur to be shaved from me will be the day I willingly volunteer to wear a miniskirt and six inch heels.

Nonetheless, we curl up in the shade of the vacant indoor arena after the trip, relishing the relatively chilled dirt until we aren’t panting so hard. Then we’re out and roaming the yard.

I am happy galumphing around the yard, but Sparrow is more interested in sniffing the grasses and the fences. Upon his request, I lead him to where he caught up to me and he snuffles at that grass too. Tension stiffens his body, but he is unable to tell me why at the moment. All he tells me is that we wait.

:o3

Stakeouts always sounded like so much fun when I was a kid. Now they are not so fun. I lie on my belly and stare toward the driveway from behind the shed while Sparrow crouches like a cat in the long grass. I am bored, and have heard many squirrels and rabbits pass that I would love to chase. But I can’t. I am waiting.

The monotony breaks a little when Sparrow trots up to me and sends me back to the gas station to get food. I am happy to run to the station and Change to a human; it is something to do.

Once I was human and dressed I took a moment of “Wait a minute…” and got annoyed that Adam had sent me, a tiny little girl with no weapons or defense training, to the gas station by herself while he might do something interesting if our “quarry” arrived.

Then I kicked myself. First of all, it wasn’t like I was helpless anymore. If someone tried to mess with me, I could only get stronger and more fearsome the more I Changed. And if they did show up, Adam would know what to do with them better than I would. My short self-pity party was ill-founded.

I found a wallet in the truck under the seat. Once inside of the mart, I took advantage of the rest facilities before buying a box of donuts, three tubes of Pringles, and five huge water bottles. The guy behind the counter gave me a weird look, but I didn’t get any gut feeling that there was a problem. As I put the wallet back, I vowed to pay Adam back the rough twenty that I had spent of his money. Checking to make sure the station guy wasn’t looking, I stripped and shifted again, then take the handles of the plastic bag in my mouth and gallop back.

I haven’t missed anything. Sparrow’s head comes up from the grass at my approach, but he is in the same place he was when I left. Tail waving like a flag, I prance down the road while listening for tire wheels behind me that will warn me to leap into the cover available. I drop the bag a bit ahead of Sparrow and a bit to his left, then sit on the other side of it. We stay there for a moment as my companion grows amused, then exasperated. It takes me a long moment to figure out that it’s hard to open all this factory-sealed food with paws. I whine. The food smells have tickled my nose all the way here, and to continue smelling them when I know I can’t get them is torment to me. Whining, I lie down and drop my head on my paws.

Sparrow grunts, and it sounds like a human laugh. My ears rise, and I watch as he yanks the powdered donuts from the bag and sets the box between his front paws. He bites the box and chews and tears the lid off.

If I was human I would hit myself. It is so simple. Then I realize that he is eating donuts and I am not, so I shove my head in there in attempt to get some for myself. We growl and snap at each other, then sneeze from sugar powder in our noses. Our eyes meet, challenging. I am not sure whose tail wags first, but then it is a game.

I grab a can of Pringles and tear off the lid and seal and start eating the interior, getting frustrated that I can’t seem to actually eat the chips without dribbling more in the dirt, or eating the cardboard. Since the latter doesn’t taste good, I decide that chips are biodegradable enough. The cheese flavoring smells chemical to me, but the taste is good. Sparrow is ripping into the pizza flavored tube inches away.

I finish my chips first and lunge for the third, grabbing the base in my teeth. Sparrow snatches the other end, and we tug on it until it breaks in half, spewing original flavored Pringles all over the place. This is fun for a few seconds, and then the water bottles have our attention. These are particularly difficult, because water is much harder to keep in its plastic. I waste my first bottle figuring that out when numerous tooth marks only serve as leaks. Sparrow is ripping at the cap in his teeth, and when he finally gets it off water bursts from the hole from the pressure of his paws, spattering his face and paws with water. He sneezes, and I can tell why—the flavoring added to the water smells really funky. I come over and lick at the bottle, and the water tastes weird, but not bad. Not good enough to drink, though.

The last three are fun chewtoys.

:o3

It isn’t until we’ve lain amongst the scattered wrappers and crumbs for awhile when tires abrade gravel road. I roll to a crouch while he does the same in the grass until the car passes. A window is down, so we wait until the smell of chemical-strawberry and weird-human reaches us. My tail wags as I recognize Chris. Sparrow tenses next to me, though, and I whine concern. He doesn’t answer, but belly-crawls his way closer. Two people get out of the car. Shut the doors. The hair my packmate’s spine rises, and I struggle to discern why. Sparrow creeps forward until Chris and Drake go inside, and then he is by the car and giving it the full sniff-over. I sniff it too, and find nothing that is not ordinary for either of them. The car smells of Drake and Chris, with lingering Brad.

The door opens again, and Drake leans out and freezes. Sparrow and I do the same. It is silent between the three of us, two massive wolves staring down a teenage human boy. A chair scrapes back inside the house.

Then Drake drops to his haunches with a snarl and starts to Change.